To E-file or Not to E-file? That Was the Question for Sen. Ensign

As we’ve pointed out many times on this blog, the chairman of the committee that raises money for Republican Senate candidates, Sen. John Ensign of Nevada, has been holding up a no-brainer bill requiring senators to file their campaign finance reports electronically. It’s been hard to get justification for delaying this non-controversial transparency measure–the House and presidential candidates stopped filing on paper years ago–so several of us from the Center for Responsive Politics went to the National Press Club to see if we could get Ensign to explain himself.

CRP, in collaboration with other nonpartisan government watchdog groups, has been campaigning for months to get this bill, S.223, passed. S.223 would ensure that the public is armed with information about where the candidates got their money–and how they spent it–before they go to the polls, rather than after the information has been re-typed at taxpayer expense and the election is over. It would also save hundreds of thousands of sheets of paper and half a million dollars in taxpayer funds every election cycle. So what Ensign had to say surprised us: “My job would be easier if we had electronic filing,” he said. “I am 100 percent for electronic filing.”

We have to wonder, then, why he’s holding so tightly to an amendment to this important bill that has effectively acted as a poison pill. Ensign’s amendment requires that organizations that file ethics complaints against senators reveal their donors, an issue that’s worth debating but not exactly germane to whether senators should modernize and join other political candidates in the 21st century. Ensign has asked for a vote on his amendment on the Senate floor, but the best he can get is a promise from Senate Rules Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), which has jurisdiction over procedural issues, that she’ll hold a hearing on the amendment. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada’s other senator, has also been cautious, likely fearing that if the amendment is passed, it would have a chilling effect on nonprofits that monitor congressional ethics. (Nonprofits aren’t required to disclose their donors to the Internal Revenue Service. CRP voluntarily discloses our funders on OpenSecrets.org.)

The Senate ethics committee does report generally on its work; an annual report documents how many complaints the committee received and how it handled them. “In the House they have very formal and rigorous requirements to file complaints,” said Ensign’s communications director, Tory Mazzola, in an e-mail to Capital Eye. “The complaints must be sworn to and filed by a Member of Congress. With no requirements in the Senate the result is that people create shell organizations in order to register purely political complaints. By not allowing a vote on Ensign’s amendment, the Democrats are protecting this.”

Ensign told reporters this morning that adding his amendment to the e-filing bill was the only way to get a vote on the ethics complaints issue and felt it was important enough to risk the outcome of the electronic filing legislation. To those of us who’ve been advocating for electronic filing for a long time, and have never heard any objection to it, Ensign’s amendment seems more like the only way to kill a popular and important measure that’s otherwise hard to oppose. But Ensign does make a good point: Why doesn’t the Senate’s Democratic leadership bring the whole bill up for a vote and see what happens? Electronic filing should pass easily, because so many senators have already committed to support it, and we’ll see how the chamber votes on Ensign’s amendment. The ball would seem to be in Sen. Reid’s court now, and let’s hope this game wraps up before the Senate adjourns for the year.

The occasion for this morning’s remarks by Ensign, who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, was a joint appearance at the Press Club with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. The two talked about their strategies and predictions in the country’s competitive Senate races. Schumer supports S.223, but he didn’t say anything about the measure to today’s audience of reporters and members of the public. The fundraising committees that Ensign and Schumer lead also still file on paper, which is delaying electronic disclosure of the millions of dollars in independent expenditures that the DSCC and NRSC are making in tight races right now.

The two senators also discussed the role of 527 organizations in this year’s election, with both agreeing that these outside issue groups that can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money are undermining some of the spending by the NRSC and DSCC in the close Senate races. Ironically, Ensign suggested that electronic disclosure by 527s, and harder-to-track 501(c)(4) groups, is paramount. “I hate the 527s,” he said. “I’d like to take the limits off and require 100 percent disclosure. If you made a contribution, you’ve got to put it online.”

One of our funders, the Sunlight Foundation, also sent a representative to question Ensign this morning, and you can read Sunlight’s take here. Sunlight and CRP continue to urge the public to call senators and see where they stand on S.223 and Ensign’s amendment, and Pass223.com provides instructions and a way to log what you find out.

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